She’s spent the past 50 years either working for a newspaper or driving a semi cross-country, but it’s a love for animals and farming that will be Terry Katz’s primary focus starting next week.

Katz ends an 11-year affiliation with the Sturgis Journal Monday, as the 68-year-old Sherwood-area resident is retiring. Though she’s been raising animals and starting orchards on her 10-acre property as time allows around her newspaper schedule, Katz said she’s ready to take on the outdoor duties full time.

“I guess it’s time … I went to my 50-year (high school) class reunion this summer and I was the only person there who was still working full time,” Katz said, laughing.

A Pennsylvania native, Katz had no shortage of newspaper experience when she took a job freelancing for the Journal starting in June 2001. She became a full-time employee in July 2002, tackling the municipal government beat. Her major, standing assignments included meeting coverage of the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners and the Sturgis City Commission.

There was never a shortage of work and Katz held her own, as she did on reporting and editing jobs at newspapers in the Pittsburgh area. Katz secured her first newspaper job as a sophomore in high school, convincing the editor of her local newspaper she could boost its circulation.

“It was the Valley Daily News and they took me on as a stringer after I told the editor I can find a story about anybody,” Katz said. “I started attending several (after-school) clubs and recording minutes of their meetings, and that’s what I’d write up for the paper.”

The editor loved her contributions, as they were heavy with names and rich with details relevant to the local school. Katz not only provided an abundance of local copy to the paper, but she also helped deliver it – a 35-paper route over five miles she covered on horseback.

Katz grew up in a household that always had farm animals. She said the small farm from her childhood days remains the source of fond memories, but it would be many years later before Katz would tend to a farm of her own.

For three years in the 1990s, Katz drove a cargo van cross country for Roberts Express, an Akron, Ohio company that specialized in expedited service. She traveled 400,000 miles with a cat and a dog and quickly found life on the road a place where she felt the most comfortable.

Her love for the job brought Katz in 1996 to truck-driving school in Coldwater, where she eventually earned her CDL and later secured a job as an over-the-road trucker at All Star Transportation in Pacific, Mo. She hauled produce from California east to New Jersey and many large cities.

Page 2 of 3 - Those who know the soft-spoken, cordial Katz may have a hard time picturing her behind the wheel of a semi tractor-trailer, patronizing truck stops and living the life of a trucker. But it was a place from which she saw the best the United States has to offer.

Her journalism instincts kept Katz inquisitive and she always managed to make acquaintances at every truck stop; from bums to hookers to other drivers. As she told her first editor many decades ago, Katz repeated that she could find a story in anybody, and the details she’d glean from people at truck stops satisfied her curiosity about everyday people.

“I’ve seen a lot of the country and I consider myself lucky because of that,” she said. “Even when I’d drive to Sturgis to go to work at the Journal, my mind would be on the highway.”

Katz still has a valid Class A CDL but she doesn’t expect to make any more long over-the-road trips. In 1998, she married her truck-driving instructor, Bryan, and the two live outside Sherwood.

As much as she loves seeing the country and meeting its people, Katz said she got used to spending her vacation days at home, caring for her chickens, ducks and geese, and nurturing her orchard. The 32-tree orchard, she hopes, will someday yield apples, nectarines and apricots.

Katz made her decision to retire in September but agreed to stay on board through the end of the year. Far and away, Katz said her favorite stories were about animals and farms, and Fair Week in Centreville was always a highlight.

Looking ahead to retirement, Katz is confident she made the right choice and is sure the best years of her life are in front of her.

“I plan to do a lot of reading, take care of my critters and learn more about growing (fruit-bearing trees), so I’ll have a productive orchard someday,” she said.

During her tenure at the Journal, Katz won five awards through the Michigan Press Association and Associated Press competition. In 2005, she was named employee of the year by the Journal’s previous owner, Liberty Publishing Co. And in 2011, Katz was the recipient of the Michigan Ag Communicator of the Year award, presented by the Michigan Farm Bureau.

Prior to working at the Journal, she earned more than 50 state and national reporting awards, including being named Pennsylvania's Newspaper Reporter of the Year.

She was recently acknowledged by the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners as well as the Colon Village Council for her years of coverage.

Fellow Sturgis Journal reporter Rosalie Currier said Katz stepped up her commitment to covering Colon village and Colon Township governments after the community’s newspaper folded.

Page 3 of 3 - “She was very diligent in covering Colon news after their own newspaper was discontinued and one of her favorite sayings was ‘I can find a story anywhere,’" Currier said. “From my five years of working in the newsroom with Terry, it seemed that her love for writing the news and love for her farm was a race too close to call. But apparently this time, the farm won.”